Browsing articles in "IA"
design, IA, metadata, schemas, standards, taxonomy
Mar 4, 2013
Leala Abbott
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Marketing your metadata schemas: Break them out of the spreadsheet!

With most things in life, context is key. We work with it so much we often forget how abstract a metadata schema trapped in a spreadsheet can be. All our hours of work, relegated to a boring set of rows and columns. It’s anti-climatic and no one except for a few right-brain folks, usually tech, even want to read it. In some cases its necessary to get your message across to other stakeholders outside the realm of IT. Therefore, its important to boil your work down to the most important aspects. I’ve found the thing that they are looking for most is context and simplicity. Whether you are creating a metadata schema, a content blueprint, a metadata matrix, or whatever you are calling it these days, relate it to your audience. Here’s some examples of how: Annotations: For the design of a website or application for example, do what you… Read More »

IA, schemas, standards, taxonomy
Jun 1, 2012
Leala Abbott
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Different Types of Controlled Vocabularies

——————————————————————————————— There are four types of Controlled Vocabularies: ——————————————————————————————— >Value list: Lists of terms with no semantic relationships. For example a list of values for a drop-down menu. >Synonym ring: Terms linked together with equivalent synonyms (our kitty cat image below). >Taxonomy: Hierarchal lists (with broader and narrower categories) or faceted lists which also might include synonyms. >Thesaurus: The most complex form which combines all three types of semantic relationships (synonyms, hierarchy and associations such as: used for, broader term/BT, narrower term/NT, related term/RT). As you move from left to right we see that the structural complexity increases in the types of semantic relationships present (equivalence, hierarchical and associative). Not everyone agrees on the order represented above: Morville and Rosenfeld (The Polar Book/Information Architecture for the World Wide Web pp. 194-201) put things in a slightly different order (synonym rings then value lists) which I’ve never really quite understood their… Read More »

archives, CMS, DAM, digitization, IA, IOA, LIS, metadata
Aug 4, 2010
Leala Abbott
2 Comments

What kinda ‘Who’ do you need to make DAM work?

Digital Asset Management is not just an application, but it is a business practice requiring certain roles in place for success in any organization. For the most part the profession of Digital Asset Management is not fully understood, except for by those in the ‘know’. This is due in part to the maturation and growth of the field in just over the last few years. Have you taken a look at the landscape of content management technologies recently? This is no longer a one-trick pony in a one-horse town, but a process that requires support from a skilled selection of professionals and has touch-points across the organization. To quote one of my favorite bloggers on DAM, H. de Gyor, “Digital Asset Management is a business need, not just a technology or another database”. Many institutions who have systems that were implemented over 4 years ago are now facing the challenges… Read More »

archives, CMS, communication, DAM, design, IA, metadata, museology, social-media, technology
Jun 7, 2010
Leala Abbott
4 Comments

Professional Silos: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel!

Call it a rant, I call it a blog “posting”. Lately, I have become acutely aware that there exists a major hurdle to digital project success (specifically digital asset management) that we who work in institutions need to be aware of. I recently had a colleague return from an Archives Conference abroad that focused on Digital Asset Management and to put it lightly her mind was blown. She’s not an archivist, she’s not a digital asset manager, but she is an administrative assistant in a cultural institution. Her reactions to what she learned further confirmed some of my own feelings I had after recently speaking at both a Digital Asset Management conference and an Archives conference. Which is that, technology has changed our work environments and roles more than most people are aware. It is no longer acceptable to operate in a silo and remain unaware of how other professions… Read More »

About me:

Metadata and Taxonomies are my thing. I spend an awful lot of time drinking coffee and having existential dilemmas on how to categorize what the hell I do for a living.

Nerdy things I blog about for other nerdy nerds: metadata and taxonomies, content structure governance, Digital Asset Management and Content Management (DAM/CMS), technology transitions and business change, professional development, social media privacy, and usability for information retrieval.

Nutshell: I'm an ex-BMXer that now knows a helluva a lot about metadata and taxonomies and spends her idle time picking locks, lurking 7chan, playing competitive soccer, wishing she was in an impromptu music video, or teaching people to ride a Segway at HOPE. Yup, that's how I roll (literally).

Disclaimer: This is a personal weblog and does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer (any of them). It is solely my opinion lame as you might think it is.

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